


Anger Management

by magic_and_hijinx



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: M/M, artist/animation probs, brian is just concerned, pudding mention, ross has anger issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5495897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magic_and_hijinx/pseuds/magic_and_hijinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there's anything that pisses Ross off, it's losing his work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anger Management

Ross slumped back on his chair, using the stylus in his hand to rub his crusty eyelid. Any day where he was drawing for the most part seemed to spend his energy twice as quickly. It wasn’t as if it was physically tiring, but every drawing finished felt like a mental mountain that he’d overcome. The satisfaction made it all worth the while, but he didn’t tend to feel it until after he’d taken a long fucking nap.  
He forced himself forward again, clutching the stylus between his index and middle finger. An uncoloured star fleet took up the entire surface of his tablet and 2/3rds of the screen of the laptop it was plugged in to. To the naked eye, it was finished- but a few messy lines here and there made it impossible for him to pack it away.  
He lowered the stylus until it was inches away from the screen, stared at it for twenty seconds, and pulled it away again. It was too risky.  
A single mis-erased line on one of the space-crafts would leave a giant hole in the ship at either side of it. It didn’t help that he hadn’t saved in an hour.  
He lifted his head, much to the chagrin of his heavy neck, and set the stylus down in favour of running his finger along the mousepad. The mouse was unresponsive after hours of inactivity. Sighing, he clicked down on the mousepad a few times to wake it up again. Instead, a sheet of white fell over the screen and a dialogue box popped up in the middle of the screen.

“Adobe Photoshop is not responding. Checking for solutions to the problem…”

The message stayed for a few moments before it was replaced with a popup which read, “Adobe Photoshop has stopped working. Check online for solutions to the problem or close the program.”  
Ross’s eyes bulged. His breaths were off-beat and short enough make his head thump from the lack of oxygen. Fuck, don’t do this to me.  
He hammered down the left mouse pad button over the ‘Check Online For Solutions’ button. It was practically a death sentence, but just this once he hoped they’d actually find a solution.  
The ‘Adobe Photoshop experienced a problem and had to close’ popup appeared before he could finish the thought.  
Moments passed where he just stared. His head grew light from holding his breath. The heat from his arms faded away; or at least it felt like it.  
“Are you _FUCKING KIDDING ME_?” The shrill sound bounced off the office walls and bled through to the rooms connected to it. Ross threw himself back on the chair, nearly forcing it to topple.  
He spun around in the chair to face the door, then kicked it under the desk. As he stormed out the open door, there was a heavy metallic clunk against the office’s hardwood floor. _Piece of crap._  
The house woke with a start and soon heads were peeking out of every door. Ross strode down the corridor, squeezing his fists until they trembled, and kicked the door of his and Holly’s bedroom open.  
Holly’s 2-day absence was harshly felt if the unmade bed and the piles of clothes hanging out the open closet was anything to go by. The books living on the bookcase at the side of their bed were beginning to fall into messy vertical bundles, too. In the far left corner of the room beside the clothes avalanche was a pile of paper that Holly wasn’t allowed to touch; it contained every little doodle, storyboard or finished work that Ross had done on paper since 2010.  
Ross slammed the wardrobe door shut and swiped at the pile.  
A shadow bounced off the corner of the room and two large hands gripped his wrists.  
“ _Ross_.” The oldest Grump’s deep, resounding voice hit the bottom of Ross’s neck like a knife.  
At first, Ross thrashed lightly against Brian’s hold but he eventually gave up and pulled himself onto his feet. He turned around, still with Brian’s hands latched onto his wrists.  
“I saw what you were doing.” Brian gave Ross a look that carried a mixture of disappointment and expectancy.  
“Dude, _fuck off_. I need to rip something.” His voice was little more than a frail whisper swallowed by anger. He roughly pushed against Brian’s arms as he spoke.  
“You need to rip something? Okay.” He let go of Ross’s wrists, throwing his arms up in to the air to show neutrality. Keeping his gaze firmly on Ross, he took a few slow steps back and grabbed a book from the book case. He handed it to Ross. “Here.”  
Ross looked down at the book, then up at Brian.  
“It’s not like you’re going to read it anyways.”  
Ross knelt down and tore into the pages, ripping the paper from the seam. A ball of fury-induced pressure swelled inside his stomach. His breaths turned ragged and heavy as he tried to breath around it. Redness flushed through his forehead down to his chin and his chest filled with acid. He made a sea of tiny, torn pieces of paper around himself, eventually making his way from the front cover to the back. Not even the spine was spared in his rampage.  
As Brian watched over him, he silently thanked his stars that he’d picked out a paperback. He’d gotten used to Ross’s fits of anger in the past few months but it took a while before he could really comprehend it. He specialised in things, not people, but what kind of a scientist was he if he couldn’t recognise patterns and behaviours? Ross was a special case; when he got angry, it was like there was an external force controlling his hands and feet- and Ross himself was well too aware of it. It was surprisingly difficult for Brian to keep still whenever Ross was at his worst, either because Brian was a sucker for action or Ross just had an inexplicable aura about him that made Brian wish he could make everything better.  
When the book was reduced to nothing more than a pile of scraps, Ross rose from his paper tomb. As the ball of pressure slowly faded, he let out a deep breath that had been trapped behind it. He eyed the bookcase for a moment, then hesitantly reached out a hand to grab another book. He was immediately thwarted by Brian’s hand around his wrist.  
“Ross. You’re okay. Look at me.”  
Ross’s gaze slowly drifted over to Brian, though he couldn’t quite focus to look him in the eye.  
“See? You’re fine.”  
Ross fell silent for a moment, letting his gaze float on its own accord. “…Pudding.”  
“…Pudding?”  
Ross looked Brian square in the eye. “Y-You know at the end of the livestream?”  
Brian bit back a grin. “Yes, I do remember that.”  
“C-Can we do that again? It was nice…”  
Brian rubbed his knuckle across his mouth to cover up the warmth tugging at the corner of his lips. “Absolutely. Let’s go get you some pudding.”


End file.
